“The Kenilworth Project: a neighborhood, a church, a family”

The Kenilworth Project is a multi-year effort by author and community historian Joe Lapp to discover, document, preserve, and creatively write about the history of the Kenilworth neighborhood in Far Northeast D.C.

The Kenilworth Project highlights the Kenilworth area as a unique East of the River, Washington, D.C. neighborhood in its connection to the Anacostia River through the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens; its history as a white trolley suburb that became a black, urban housing ‘project;’ its importance in the movement for tenant management within low-income government housing communities; its acceptance of white, Amish-Mennonite missionaries and their church’s integration into neighborhood life; its resident’s stories of significant African American history; and its significance as a microcosm of local and national neighborhood, housing, religious, and social trends.


Background

Elmer and Fannie Lapp moved to Washington, D.C. in 1965 from rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Amish-Mennonites sent by a conservative Mennonite mission board to serve in the primarily African American neighborhood of Kenilworth.  They moved onto Douglas Street, a quiet street of single family homes next to a low-income government housing complex called Kenilworth Courts.  Though set apart from neighbors by their white skin and traditional ways, the Lapps quickly became an accepted part of the community.  Soon other Mennonite volunteers came to help with the kid’s clubs, Bible schools, prayer breakfasts, and other outreach programs.  They called the mission “Fellowship Haven.”  Elmer was ordained as a reverend, and, in 1975, the group built a small church building on Douglas Street.  Through many changes in the church and the community, the congregation there continues as a body made up of both white, Amish-Mennonite ‘missionaries’ and local African Americans who joined the church.

Joe Lapp was born in 1974 at Freedmans Hospital in Washington, D.C. and came home to the Kenilworth neighborhood.  During his youth, his family moved back and forth several times between urban Kenilworth and rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  He learned to adapt between cultures—  rural and urban, white and black, Amish-Mennonite and African American— and his parents’ love for the people of Kenilworth became his love for the place.

In 2001 Joe Lapp completed an English degree at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with a minor in Performance Studies.  At Calvin he focused on poetry and completed an honors thesis in creative writing, while also experimenting with performance art.  Joe returned to the Kenilworth neighborhood in early 2003 to do some research and writing.  A modest idea of discovering the history of the neighborhood and recording some of his family’s stories has become The Kenilworth Project.


Recording Stories: the “Out of Kenilworth” oral history project

Having learned oral history techniques in undergraduate studies, Joe Lapp interviewed a few members of his family and the Fellowship Haven Church community, recording the stories of church/neighborhood interaction he heard growing up.  Soon his interests expanded.  He began to also seek information about the Kenilworth neighborhood itself: about Kimi Gray and the tenant management movement at Kenilworth Courts, about Douglas Street and its long African American history, about Kenilworth as an originally white suburb, about the history of the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, and about the growth of the nearby Eastland Gardens community.

The oral history consists of interviews with almost forty interviewees recorded on over ninety one-hour long cassette tapes.  The project includes full life histories of Elmer and Fannie Lapp, as well as interviews with each of their children detailing their experiences growing up in a cross-racial, cross-cultural church/neighborhood setting.  Among many others, it includes Gladys Roy, who reared nine children in Kenilworth Courts and became part of the tenant management movement led by Kimi Gray, as well as her daughter Pat Roy who joined the Fellowship Haven Church and continues to attend there today.

When transcription is completed, this oral history project— transcripts, tapes, and supporting documentation— will be archived at one or more D.C. area institutions, such as the Washingtoniana Division of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, where it will be available to the public for educational and historical research.


Discovering History: the life of a neighborhood

Realizing that the oral history project alone was not enough, its information incomplete and subject to the whims of personal memory, Joe Lapp began to conduct other historical research as well.  Following is a list of some of the research sources and materials he has collected or identified.

Assembled a file of every significant article on the Kenilworth neighborhood in the Washington Post newspaper from its inception in 1878 until today
Copied or made notations of historical photos available in area repositories such as the Library of Congress, the Washingtoniana division of the MLK Library, and the D.C. Historical Society Library
Scanned or copied pictures from various community members’ personal archives
Examined, and copied where possible, historical, real estate, and fire insurance maps of the Kenilworth area

As a result of these activities, Joe Lapp has become an expert on the breadth of Kenilworth area history.  In addition, he has been documenting the present state of the Kenilworth neighborhood through his own photography activities.


Journaling the Divide: an adult returns to his childhood home

When Joe Lapp moved back to the Kenilworth neighborhood in February of 2003, he had been absent from the community for years.  Also, his parents had left the area in 2001, and he was the only family member living in Washington, D.C.  Moving back to his childhood home as a college-educated white man unconnected to the place except by family and memory, he began to keep a journal of his experiences re-assimilating into the neighborhood.

This journal, which covers two years and contains more than 300 type-written pages, is a narrative of the racial, cultural, political, and communal realities he navigated in his quest to reconnect with his past.  Part ethnography, part record of events, and part personal journal, it plumbs the past of the author’s relationship to the neighborhood as he struggles to adapt to the community’s present and help envision its future.

This journal contains stories of those who remembered Joe and his family and welcomed him back into the neighborhood, as well as stories of those who sought to ostracize him as a white man in a neighborhood where he seemed out of place.  In itself a historical record of two years of Kenilworth neighborhood life, this writing puts personal background to the historical research Joe has conducted.


Outcomes: a gift to the city

The Kenilworth Project is planned as a gift to the city and a step toward establishing Mr. Lapp as an author and community historian.  In keeping with these twin goals, he envisions the following outcomes:

-The oral history project, along with accompanying documentation, archived in various repositories in the Washington, D.C. area, with the transcripts and tapes available to the public for educational and historical research

-A published manuscript of annotated stories taken from the oral history narratives

-A series of talks, community events, and literature distributions highlighting information taken from The Kenilworth Project and encouraging community members to undertake their own historical research projects

-Exhibits of historical and contemporary Kenilworth photos with narration

-Kenilworth-based writing placed in news and literary publications

-A nationally-published creative nonfiction manuscript telling the story of the Lapp family, the Kenilworth neighborhood, and Fellowship Haven Church

Such outcomes will benefit the city and, potentially, the nation by illuminating the unique Kenilworth story and spurring others to record their own history in similar ways.  Mr. Lapp hopes that this project will encourage local and national discussion on important issues of religion, race, poverty and economics, housing, and environmental preservation.